conference

As we usher the New year, progressive organizations are setting goals and developing plans to improve their performance over the past year. As global markets fear of a tightening euro and a looming recession, large organizations are bootstrapping with tighter budgets, less time, and fewer resources. To effectively compete, organizations will need to do more with less. Businesses will have to build products and provide services faster, cheaper, and better. To be more successful companies are persistently striving to get things done right the first time.

And to do that consistently requires organizations to use effective project management techniques thereby produce a sustainable competitive advantage. Chennai is growing to become a global hub for projects at different domains. India is an indomitable leader in industries like Auto, Infrastructure, IT and Pharma. Product managers across domains are focused on building core competencies/ service excellence by controlling cost with effective project management to delivers their products and services at lower margins.Effective use of project management techniques to enhance deliveries at controlled cost, within allocated resources and on time is a differentiator. This is the premise under which the theme of the conference has been set ” Innovative Project Management for Competitive Advantage ”

Come Feb 2012, we at PMI Chennai Chapter intend to host a 2 day Tamil Nadu Project Management Conference on this at Hotel Savera, Chennai on Feb 18, 19. We expect to reach out to thought leaders, Practicing project practitioners and Senior Project Managers across diverse domains from all over Tamil Nadu to come share their experience and knowledge in this elite platform.

By participating in this conference you will have an opportunity to listen to the best and the brightest thought leaders from business, industry, community and Academia and get a fair dosage of learning, knowledge and gyaan from them. Come network with more than 300+ Project managers from all over Tamil Nadu converging for a high power two day knowledge sharing session and gain competitive edge at your workplace.

The Theme for this year’s Conference is ” Unleash The Power of Project Management of a better Tomorrow “. organized by PMI India along with PMI TEAM INDIA (7 PMI chapters of India) hosted by Pearl City Chapter, Hyderabad.

PMI creates history in Showcasing the best Projects in the Indian Subcontinent and the convergence of best of talent to share the cutting edge practices in Project Management. Of the 12000 certified Project Management Professionals from India, the conference has a foot fall of more than 700 of them at the Venue which is a very impressive number. The Name badges had different color bands to indicate the Project Management Qualification of each delegate thus facilitating breakout conversations among the peer group.

Anything @ HICC is a pompous affair and PMI PMC was no exception. Starting with the traditional Kuthuvilakku (lighting of Lamp) by the distinguished chair and political blessings from the honorable Chief Minister Shri Rosaiah, it had all the making of Showcasing what India is all about to the distinguished global audience.

Welcoming the delegates, Mr Raj Kalady, Managing Director PMI India was all praise for the “awesomeness” of the Event.PMI India team drives excellent coordination between volunteers of 7 different Chapters to ensure that the pre event coverage is extensive across industry and Project Management practitioners. In-spite of their day jobs all the volunteers draw synergy to make this event a grandiose success .

Mr V Srinivasa Rao, Chairman PMI India Team talks about how Mahatma Gandhi through his philosophy of ” Resistance through non-violence ” was able to successfully execute the greatest project of Delivery Freedom for India. He also cited examples of post independence projects like the space research programmes and . Successful Projects are not just about translating profits / bottom-lines but about impacting social change . There is a major need for Project management competency in India.

The Keynote was delivered by Mr Jagdish khattar, Former MD, Maruti Udyog who talked about how Maruti brought transformational change in the Automobile business landscape in India. He was all praise for the lessons we Indians learnt associating with japanese (Suzuki) The corporate mantra of Project management at Maruti Udyog was Plan – Plan – Execute -Plan more .

Mr Peter Monkhouse , Director At-Large PMI Worldwide, talks about Project Management as a Strategic Catalyst for transforming India. He showcases Indian success stories like Delhi Metro Rail Project and TATA Nano and how they stand setting precedents for more successful projects to come. Incidentally TATA NANO was awarded PMI’s Business Process Award on 30th Oct 2009 at London. Recent global survey conducted with employers on “What Skill is the most important in Staff ? ” the top answer was ” Project Execution”. The Key value drivers in India Economy was the advancement of the Baby boom generation and the incoming workforce being smaller and more demanding. This also resulted in increasing demand even on global downturn. PMI India today boasts of 12000 certified professionals with more than 16% growth (Second largest in the world). 20 years back we had just 20 PMI professionals here.

Mr Steven Fahrenkrog, VP, PMI USA recalled his Indian experience . Vote of thanks was delivered by Mr Suresh Chandra, President PMI Pearl City Chapter thanking the 7 coordinating chapters for the success of the event. As soon as I came to the venue I met with Mr Arun Kiran Ponnekanti, who heads Corporate communications and Brand Management for PMI PMC. After a 10 minute discussion we got to work on updating the Social Media tools like Twitter ( #PMIPMC ), Facebook and Youtube with minute by minute live updates.

Incidentally i am at the HICC at the same place exactly a year ago (2008). I was invited by NiXi(National Internet Exchange of India) as a Internet Governance Research Fellow to IGF 2008 and here i am a year later as part of PMP sharing notes with the peer group. Look forward to 2 more exciting days with PMI Team India. Good Nite folks !

A few months back I was supposed to leave to Jaipur on the that day morning and missed it just to realise that evening there were a string of bomb blasts there. Eversince that day everytime i am supposed to fly domestic there is always a awareness to keep checking news until late night. Day before was one such episode as i was preparing to fly to Delhi. The entire week we had added concern on severe rains lashing the city continuously due to the aftermath of ” Cyclone Nisha ” tormenting the state. By 11 pm i was checking twitter from my mobile to get info on these attacks and the rest of night was spent awake before the television as events unfolded. Inspite of the stormy weather i couldnt avoid the trip to delhi and Noida as i had people flying in from brunei for that meeting.

We salute the Valiant heroes like ATS Cheif Hemant Karkare, ACP Ashok Kamte and encounter Specialist Saliskar and similar 14 such people from the police forces who laid down their lives protecting India and our guest in the line of action. Every time terror strikes closer to home there is always an urgent plea within oneself to get proactive and gear up for crisis / Emergency response management. Last time we had such a incident was a week before Barcamp Chennai 2 and we ensured that we got someone from the Police department (Commissioner’s Office) to come and still we felt that we havent heard anyone in particular give us a clear picture on how we can work as a team to help the public at crisis. Maybe we are barking at the wrong tree. We should have atleast a halfday workshop on Crisis and Emergency response management in case of any manmade or natural disasters . We need to get a dedicated workshop arranged on this topic with experts. Learnings from such workshop can translate in saving valuable time that might be a matter of Life and death during such crisis.

More than 50 hrs of thorough engagement with these radical elements has got the attention of the world into India. Time and again let me reiterate ” Terrorism has no Religion ! ” . This year i read a book called ” Shantaram ” by Gregory Roberts that gave a newhue to Mumbai in my mind. Places like Leopold Cafe ,The Taj hotel have been painted with such detail in the book that you feel like you are there. Disaster like this shakes our basic premise and trust on Humanity. In the forthcoming IGF Conference at Hyderabad where I have been invited with a Fellowship on Internet Governance from NIXI (National Internet Exchange of India) I would be making an effort with our global friends to look at this disaster from an Indian prespective as well.